May 4, 2023 / Mom &… Podcast Episode 118 / Guest: Sarah Hart-Unger, MD

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Show Summary:

Do new pens and a fresh, new planner make your heart sing? Us, too! We had a fantastic, planner-nerd discussion with this week’s guest, Sarah Hart-Unger, MD. Part-time pediatric endocrinologist, part-time podcaster, full-time parent, blogger, runner, and… more. Talk about making her ellipses count!

Sarah had wise advice on how to manage time, especially for those of us who may have more than one job that demands our attention. We learned so much from her, and were inspired to figure out what works for us and what doesn’t when it comes to organizing the calendars, lists, goals, and more that fill our heads all day, every day.

Topics From This Episode:

• Time management
• Running
• Nested goals
• Goal tracker Susanne mentioned (that Jess Lahey uses)
• Quintiles vs. Quarters
• Handling unexpected demands on our time
• Planning tools
• Planners
• Pens
• Jetpens.com
• Campus planner from Kokuyo (available here and on Amazon)
• Pilot Juice Up (Sarah loves the 0.4 in black)
• Links to all things planner: Planner Lovers, Start Here (on Sarah’s home page)
• Also check out Sarah’s show notes for Best Laid Plans – links to products and more
• Custom Canva templates for planners (Susanne has one for Campus)
• Dutch & Deckle (the heavy but gorgeous planner for anyone who doesn’t need to carry it with them)
• Blogging
• Time suckers, like social media or checking email

Look, Listen, Learn

Susanne

• Barry
• Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
• Bunny by Mona Awad
• Selena Gomez

Sarah

• Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Bad Sisters
• Running Coach

Missy

• Single Drunk Female, season 2
• The Breakfast Club
• The Pink Stuff
• Writing a 250-word book pitch

More About Sarah Hart-Unger:

Sarah Hart-Unger is a pediatric endocrinologist, a mom of three, a blogger, and has not one, but TWO podcasts on these topics. You can find her blogging daily at TheShuBox.com, on her podcast Best Laid Plans, and as a co-host with Laura Vanderkam (our guest on episode 105) on Best of Both Worlds.

Connect with Sarah Hart-Unger:

• shubox.com
• Best Laid Plans Live (link also takes you to Best Laid Plans Academy, currently sold out)

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Watch this episode on our YouTube Channel!

Musical Notes

Our delightfully happy intro and outro theme music, “We Will Get Through This” is performed by Young Presidents, and used under license from Shutterstock.

Transcript is auto-generated by a robot. Apologies in advance for misspellings or errors.

[00:00:00] Susanne:

. Welcome to the mom and dot.dot podcast. I’m Susanne Kerns mom and dot.dot writer, lgbtq and sex ed advocate. And today I am a gutter guard researcher cuz the excitement never ends with the Kern’s house.

[00:00:41] Missy: That’s right, and I’m Missy Stevens mom and dot.dot writer, foster child advocate. In this week, I am also living the homeowner dream. Susanne. I’m cleaning windows and washing pollen off of everything.

[00:00:52] Susanne: Wow, the, are you doing it yourself?

[00:00:55] Missy: A lot of it myself. Yeah, just a little bit at a time.

[00:00:58] Susanne: I think we have the windows that technically we’re supposed to be able to like flip inside so you don’t have to like go up to the second floor. But we have this really amazing lady called Gwendolyn. It’s like Gwen, or she’s Gwendolyn, but she turned it into Gwen and I love her

[00:01:13] Missy: I may need to call Quinlin.

[00:01:15] Susanne: Well, she only does it when we’re selling a house, but someday, someday I’ll clean a house that I’m gonna live in.

Oh. But this week we are so excited to have Sarah Hart Onger on this show, and Sarah really makes her ellipses count. So she’s a doctor, a pediatric endocrinologist to be specific. Uh, mom of three, a blogger who actually. Right on a daily basis we’re gonna talk about that. That’s just blows my mind and has not only one, but two podcasts.

And yeah, you can find her blogging literally daily at the shoebox, S H U B O x.com and on her pod podcast, best Laid Plans. And also she does a podcast with Laura Vanderkam, who we had on for episode 105, who helped us get our acts together with time tracking. Even though she said not to be filled with shame, I’m filled with shame by what?

What came out of those. But we are so excited to have Sarah here, so welcome.

[00:02:15] Missy: Welcome.

[00:02:16] Sarah: you. I’m so excited to be here.

[00:02:19] Missy: Well, we are really glad you’re here, and we learned a little bit about you and all the amazing things you do in your bio, but we’re wondering if you could give us a Sarah 1 0 1 where you just talk about where your career started and any pivots that led to where you are today.

[00:02:31] Sarah: Sure. So, well, I guess I’m gonna start with the blog so I’m a physician and I started writing. the blog, which was not called the Shoebox at the time, it had a really lame name called like Lost and All Alone because I was 24 at the time, and

[00:02:47] Susanne: I used to be the dusty parachute. You don’t need to explain.

[00:02:50] Missy: Yeah. I used to be Wonder Friend. Yeah.

[00:02:53] Sarah: And, I wrote in that through most of finishing med school all through residency and fellowship, and, started work as a full-time pediatric endocrinologist, in my current home in South Florida. But there was like something missing in my career. I was doing it full-time then I think I was doing it at like 80% time because at that point I had had my second kid, um, by the way, somewhere in there, I had my first kid in 2012.

I had a lot of struggles to get pregnant. So I kind of learned in the, infertility space, for a little while. then had my second went part-time, but I still just like thought there was something missing. So I ended up going into residency education and so I spent part of my career at that point actually building a residency program from scratch.

I was the associate program director for a while. Then I was a program director for a while. I’ve had like all these iterations and then covid happened. I, oh geez, kind of had like an inner reckoning with like what I really wanted to do and I love working with residents, but I did not love. Feeling like I had to please people in like all different sides and manage different people’s expectations, which is what a kind of mid-level leadership position is.

And I decided, you know what, let me try to like take this podcast thing that I’d really been doing in some form or other for like years at this point, and make it part of my like actual job. Step down from the leadership part, keep the clinical part. And so for the last. Six months, I have been 60% time, all clinical.

So on Monday, Wednesday, Fridays I see patients. I had my third kid somewhere in there. Sorry, I didn’t mean to gloss over her, but, um,

they’re now five, nine, And 11. And then I do the podcasting and blogging work kind of. Like the rest of the time. And it is such a fun combination and I’m really, really loving it.

I also am a runner, so I guess you can add that in my dot, dot dot. I used to run marathons, but my last one was in 2009. However, I’ve been like bitten by that bug again and I’m, I’m finding my old marathon desiring self. So,

[00:04:45] Susanne: Oh

[00:04:46] Sarah: I feel like that’s a part, big part of my identity these days too, as well.

And sometimes I even blog about it. but yeah, all this stuff mixed up. I feel like my life is a weird misma, but it, it is a lot of fun.

[00:04:57] Susanne: Oh, it sounds amazing, and I should have had my dot.dot b that I survived. The cap 10 K. I never gave my update. I had run a half marathon in. February?

[00:05:09] Missy: February?

[00:05:10] Susanne: not run since then and then had the cap 10 K last week, no, two weekends ago. And I’ve had

[00:05:18] Sarah: hadn’t run

[00:05:19] Susanne: had not run, had

[00:05:20] Sarah: my

goodness.

[00:05:21] Susanne: Barely even had gone for extensive walks.

And I’ve had dreams like this before where it’s like the next day you’re like, oh, I have to run the half marathon. Oh no, I haven’t done anything. And I did it. I lived the nightmare of just like, well, I guess just come to see what happens to my body. And I survived. It was not pretty, but. I had a better pace than the half marathon though, which made me kind of sad, but

[00:05:43] Missy: that’s crazy.

[00:05:44] Susanne: Yeah. Running does, when I am actually actively training can become part of your identity and that dot, dot, dot. Especially if you’re doing on a regular basis, but, okay, so we had Laura on a couple months ago and she really got us into the time tracking and thinking about time management and. I know that obviously since you share a podcast with her, you’re into that too.

So I wanna talk about how you manage that time, then around the podcast, around the running, around the family. And even though your job is 60%, we all know what a woman’s 60% is. That’s like

[00:06:20] Missy: It’s 110.

[00:06:21] Susanne: Yeah. You’re, you’re doing,

[00:06:23] Sarah: I’m gonna push back at that

slightly

[00:06:25] Susanne: you doing

[00:06:25] Sarah: that I have become pretty passionate on. if I’m signing up for 60%, which means my paycheck is 60%, I’m gonna be a hundred percent there on the days that I’m there. But then on the days that I’m not there, I’m 0%. And thankfully I’m in a profession where that does work.

I have others, you know, covering on those days, and I’m largely outpatient anyway. And. Most questions can wait one day. and that’s actually why I chose Monday, Wednesday, Friday rather than like compressing the days. I didn’t want people, like if something happened on Wednesday, I didn’t want someone to have to wait all the way until the next Monday to hear from me.

Right. But, um, I do believe that we should try to work on if, if we’ve chosen to go part-time, making sure that, I think that’s really, really important. How, I don’t think part-time is for everyone and I think full-time can be awesome. And um, in that case though, I think it’s important to make sure. That you’re doing a hundred percent and not 120% because you need time left for yourself.

So I’m not an avid time tracker. I’m actually doing it right now. I try to do it like for a week or two, every quintile and I can talk about what I consider a quintile. But basically I divide the year into five pieces. And um, like this year I was like, okay, every quintile, I wanna try to track my time for like a week or two just to get my bearings.

But I do not like Laura have a. decade long streak of accounting for every minute because, I find it pretty difficult. I, I guess I just don’t get that granular and sometimes, I mean, you know, you can just get lost and stuff and you’re like, I don’t know what happened. I mean, I think that happens the worst when you’re engaging in a lot of mindless screen time and I’ve cut a lot of that out, so that’s become a lot better.

But still, there’s like time with your kids, or just time, you’re like doing stuff that’s social and I don’t, it’s hard to like, Exactly quantify it sometimes. I mean, it’s doable, but I don’t enjoy doing it all the time, so I do. I spot check my time. What I do a lot of, and I’m very passionate about, is planning my time.

So every single day I start the day with a plan, and I have that plan by looking at what I have going on that week, looking at what I have. This also requires planning, but thought about what I might do that week and then putting those things together with my emotional state and my energy and like setting aside, okay, well then what is today actually going to contain?

Making a realistic to-do list, which is something that a lot of people struggle with. That I try to help them learn how to not put 75 things on a daily to-do list and then, um, kind of write out my schedule for the day. I love to like, Mark off little habits throughout the day. It doesn’t mean that I’m a hundred percent on doing them every day, but I like to set little goals for myself and I actually love to plan on paper.

So like each day as I decide on my lists and I decide on my schedule, I’ll kind of make little boxes for my habits and then I go about it. Always feel, not always, but generally feeling like. I don’t know. Each day I have on my plate what is manageable because I’ve decided what I’m going to put there. I feel like I am very aware of where the more free time buckets are and I think the one time I still struggle with sometimes this evenings just cause I think I run out of energy, but I actually think I, in some ways, by being aware of this, I learned to respect my own rhythms a little better anyway.

And like I wouldn’t plan to do a bunch of work at 8:00 PM because I know it wouldn’t end well.

[00:09:34] Susanne: Yeah. Now, so, okay, so you’re Habit Tracker. I’ve seen a few, and actually I’ve tried to customize one for myself. That was like a, it’s like a sheet and it just has like 30 of whatever the habits you are and you can go boom, boom, boom, boom. Or are you picking at the, during the morning being like, okay, I know where I am today and I know I’m not gonna do. X, Y, Z of those habits. So do you cherry pick then and then put them on your daily planner from

that

[00:09:57] Sarah: so there are so many different ways to track habits and there is no one right way. Yes. Some people love to have like a yearly grid. In fact, one of the planners that I love, the Ho Boni, has this cool annual planning page where you could put like 10 habits and put like a dot fridge habit, like. Every single day.

And that’s super cool. But I don’t do that at all. I, I tend to like, prefer to almost feeling like I’m starting fresh every day. If I felt like I was filling in a list, if I had two days that were bad, I’d be like, Ugh, God, why am I doing this?

[00:10:24] Susanne: Oh, what’s that one? Jess Le He has,

[00:10:26] Sarah: oh, she might have like a right every day or like,

[00:10:29] Susanne: it’s, it’s like a glorious I’m, it might be wooden or something, and

[00:10:33] Sarah: cool.

[00:10:34] Susanne: you poop the button for each of the days. I’ll have to get a picture of it. It’s really intense, but it is. You pick the one habit you’re gonna do and then you, yeah. You poop it every day.

[00:10:43] Sarah: That is super cool, but I, that, that doesn’t fit my sensibilities.

Um, I actually just like to write this little rectangle on my daily page, and there’s a little, I write m. O R, a little music note and a D and those stand for meditate. Go outside, read, listen to some kind of music and do duo lingo. I don’t know why, but currently I’m sure they’ll change.

That’s actually been like my five like habits on the habit tracker for a long time. I. But at some point, I’m sure I’ll subtract something or add something or whatever. I always kind of think about that at the start of year. Do I still wanna include those? I also work out, so I usually have like a little spot for like what my run or or exercise is for the day, but that’s like separate from my little mini habits and I just do it for the day.

I, I, I’ve gone through different planners where I’m like, oh, I’m gonna, you know, track this long term, but I don’t feel like I need that. I would rather. Just have every day be an opportunity to like see how many of those I can get and then the next day I get to start over again and see how many of them I can get.

Um, for me it just works better that way.

[00:11:40] Susanne: love that. Just having the little

[00:11:41] Sarah: like, I don’t ever add it up and say like, I did it 272 times. Like, I don’t care.

[00:11:46] Missy: It’s just a reminder.

[00:11:47] Sarah: Yes.

[00:11:48] Missy: Yeah. Well, you talked about, I wanna hear about the Quintiles I assume you reevaluate your goals and priorities, each of those quintiles. So like how do you go about figuring out what it’s going to be when you have so many things you’re doing every day?

[00:12:03] Sarah: So I, I almost wish I could like, share a screen right now, but that probably wouldn’t work and I could share my nested goals. Okay. Let me talk about those two things separately. If I was gonna trademark one thing, I don’t actually know how to trademark anything, but if I did, it would be Quintiles, because I did kind of make it up and I see people using it and I’m like, they didn’t even put my name on it.

Like,

[00:12:21] Susanne: Yes, you should.

[00:12:24] Sarah: No, I’m just kidding. Go ahead and use it. But I divide the year into five because the traditional quarters did not make sense to me. I have school-aged children. I have a five year old, a nine year old, and 11 year old. So I’m gonna be in the school age phase for like, Forever, basically.

And so, you know, going from January to April, April to July, like, what’s July in the middle of our summer. I live in South Florida, so like, you know, summer starts like basically in May. So I, I don’t know. So I decided it made more sense to do, like January 1st has to be a cut point, cuz I love January 1st and it’s just, I like it.

I know it’s arbitrary. Yeah. But I like it. So January 1st to spring break? Spring break till the end of the school year. All of summer. The beginning of school until November 1st. Why November 1st? Because I feel November and December feel kind of special. Um, like they have Thanksgiving, they have holidays.

They’re, there’s so many celebrations and you’re doing lots and lots of reflecting until the next, like thinking about the next year. Yeah. I call it reflection season. So I, I ca some people are like, well, Quint, quintile four, just be like, School to the end of the year, but like our school starts in mid August, so that would make that quintile really

[00:13:23] Missy: Really

[00:13:23] Sarah: I just feel like that fall, winter is, is set apart. So those are my five quintiles. And the way I approach goals, actually, I guess I take it back. If I was gonna trademark two things, it’d be that and then what I call the nested goal system, which is that basically there you, you wanna have like hierarchies of goals in your life.

Here’s what I don’t recommend doing, sitting down on January 1st and being like, here’s my quintile one goals here. My, here’s my quintile two goals here. No, no, no, no, no. You’re gonna make a list of. Annual goals and things you really wanna prioritize for that year, like things you’re excited about, things you wanna move forward in your career.

And it’s not gonna get like super, super specific. I mean, there may be some specific things you wanna do, but like thinking about the big things that at the end of the year you’d be really happy to get done. But then as you’re going into a new quintile and yes. The beginning of the quintile is also the beginning of a quintile is the beginning of the year.

But like, let’s think about quintile two, you’re going into the spring quintile. You go back to that year list and you go, okay, now I’m gonna make my quintile two goals. Cuz now I see what we have going on the next few months I see what I feel like. But I have this menu of things that I thought were important for this year.

What belongs, what should I pull from this like bigger bowl? Into this smaller bowl? And like I think of it as like nested kind of like Russian nesting dolls or something like that. And that’s. Where I came up with that, but like, okay, what am I gonna pull into those quintile goals? And then actually you can do that kind of level by level.

So when the month starts, let’s say it’s May, which is almost May as we’re recording this, I don’t know when it’s airing. For me, that’s like the second month of quintile two. I’m like, okay, what do I wanna get done in May? Well, I can look back at the goals I made for the quintile, which of these kind of fit in this incredibly busy month of May.

Probably like one thing because it’s May and et cetera, et cetera. And you can even do that down to the week and down to the day. And I do have like a weekly planning session where I look at what I wanted to do that month. I look at what’s on the schedule for this week. I kind of think of the flavor of where we are in the year and how I feel like if I’m sick, I’m not gonna plan a bunch of things and I think about what I wanna do that week, and that is how I would decide what I want to do each day.

Obviously lots of stuff just gets plopped on the calendar. That’s what I call like the hard landscape. You kind of have to work around that when you’re working towards the more nebulous goals, but it’s combining of both of them that allow you to get done what needs to get done, but also make sure you’re incorporating those things that you’d like want to do to move those big things forward.

So that is my, in a nutshell, the the goal setting system that I use.

[00:15:40] Susanne: I love

that. Getting away from that. The regular schedule we call our new year, like when school starts, that’s our new year because it really is, it’s like Jan, January 1st is special in the sense that, you know, the, the year is starting, but for most moms with kids who are in school, like your new year? Yes.

[00:15:57] Sarah: Quintile four. It’s a big one. Yes.

[00:16:00] Missy: yeah, yeah. this is a little bit of a bunny trail aside, but while I was listening to you talk, I was thinking you were talking about that hard scape of things that just get plopped on the calendar. What happens when things just come at you and I. I am thinking about that particularly today because a couple things popped up in my life today, and I’m like, I really have to take care of that right now.

It’s not something I could even felt like I could say, no, that’s not on my schedule today. That was not on my list today. But then it messed up like the whole rest of my day. So what do you do? Do you have a method for that or do you just roll with it?

[00:16:32] Sarah: Well, two things. When did you find out about those things this morning?

Like, okay. So it would’ve been after you planned out what you were gonna do in a day? Yeah. Then you got a triage. I mean, listen, I got kids, they get sick. Stuff happens at work. Like somebody you know, shows up at 4 59 with like a sick kid and I’m like, oh my God, I was supposed to go home.

Like, so stuff is gonna happen. And I also think like we have to, this is a list that. We’re hoping to get done. It probably shouldn’t have like 20 things on it. It’s gonna have a few things and hopefully none of the things were so emergent that they couldn’t wait until the next day. So hopefully stuff is not popping up like crazy stuff every single day.

If it is, you might wanna look at whether there are some areas in your life where. Could you predict some of these things like, you know, by doing a weekly calendar audit with less things be surprising. Now. I was late to this interview. I messed up your day today. So, you know, sometimes stuff is just gonna happen and I’m so sorry about that.

But, you know, to some things you can’t control like that. Like, but you can know, you know, sometimes podcast guests are unpredictable. So like, if I hadn’t shown today, nice to have some idea in the hopper to like use for next week’s episode, et cetera. So like some things you can kind of get ahead of by thinking about what might go wrong.

There’s a limit to that. You don’t wanna go crazy thinking of worst case scenario of everything. Um, but also just being kind to yourself when stuff happens. If there’s a house emergency, you kind of think about like, okay. Those things are not going to happen, but it looks like, you know, next Tuesday looks okay, so let me actually make a note and earmark and see if I can keep next Tuesday morning clear so I can catch up on those things.

That might be a way that you handle it.

[00:18:05] Susanne: I think it’s a really good reminder to just be kind to yourself.

[00:18:09] Missy: Right,

[00:18:09] Sarah: is gonna happen a hundred percent.

[00:18:11] Susanne: Yes. And you’re very, very human. Well now, okay, so speaking of keeping ourselves organized, your solo podcast, best Laid Plans is like, so our happy place, like I actually, you should get commissioned for, is it jet pens or whatever.

I think you led me to that dark. It’s a dark, cheerful place. It’s dark because it’s where all my money goes, but it’s my happy place, for everything. Planners, pens, highlighters, everything. But, oh, here’s my, I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but I am in love with my campus. It’s this spiral notebook, and I think you’ve talked about this on your podcast too,

[00:18:51] Sarah: That’s by Coyo and the rings open up, right? They’re like the little opening rings. That’s beautiful. I think I have a, I have a one that’s very similar, but my daughter wants the campus one, and I am, I’m. Super into it.

[00:19:03] Susanne: I am so into it cuz I, after doing so many different planners that just weren’t working for me and it’s what I realized what I wanted was just a spiral notebook. That’s what I used to use for work and I used to have like hundreds of them by the end of the year. But that was how I was used to doing things.

I like things that can flop over, can be shoved in a bag but I also like the rearrange ability. Of things which you can’t obviously do as most spiral notebooks. I love, love, love, love this thinging, which is where I found that there. and then I also just ordered a five pack of the, what did you just say?

Your favorite. You lost one of your pens the other day?

[00:19:37] Sarah: um, the pilot, um, juice up.

[00:19:39] Missy: pass.

[00:19:41] Susanne: I just ordered the five pack and it’s being delivered today and

[00:19:44] Sarah: Yeah. We had like a household crisis when I lost. My only pilot juice up, now they’re like $3. But it was like, oh my God, I never found it, by the way. I still dunno where it went,

but, um, now I I I also bought myself like a five or six pack or something. So I feel, I feel really good now.

[00:19:59] Missy: Yeah. I

hide them. And the problem is occasionally I hide them for myself, but I hide them where nobody is going to look because if they see a pin, they’ll take a pin.

[00:20:10] Susanne: Yes. Well, I’m notorious for stealing pens anyway from restaurants. Oh my gosh. Every time we go to my son’s physical therapist, he grabs one of the pens. It’s a, it’s become a joke now, that poor woman. Oh. But anyway. Okay, so you have seen, and you are familiar with probably every pen, every planner, everything available, and I’m sure it probably even changes from season to season.

Quintile or quintile about what is gonna meet your needs. But if you were gonna be, stranded on a desert island with only one pen and only one notebook right now, what would it be?

[00:20:44] Sarah: Ugh, that is hard.

Um,

[00:20:47] Susanne: Pick your favorite child.

[00:20:48] Sarah: Only one pen would probably be the pilot juice up in 0.4 with black ink, with the runner up being the Pentel gel CNA 0.4. Um, one notebook. That is rough. So not even like, wow. Um, can I have a planner in a notebook?

[00:21:05] Susanne: Yes, you can bring a planner and a notebook.

[00:21:07] Sarah: Awesome. Okay. Well then my planner would be some kind of vertical weekly planner.

Maybe a ham lock and oak, maybe the sterling ink, one of those. Okay. And then my notebook would be, what I’m currently using is my notebook, which is actually histology notebook that is just a plain grid paper with a very. Subtle timeline down the left, and I’m currently loving it because it can be just a blank page as a journal.

It can be kind of turned into a daily planning page. I like the paper actually more than the HoChi paper.

Um, it’s still, yeah, I know. I, it’s still very, thin and light, so there’s a little bit of like show through but not bleed through, but like show through.

Um. But it’s not a smudgy, like it absorbs a little bit better.

And like, you know, if you listen to vessel plans, my, my pet peeves, I’m a left-hander, I drag my hand down the page and I really don’t like an ugly smudged page. So the fact that I can use gel pens on this like fine Japanese paper without messing it up, ugh. I love it. It, it feels so great with that pen as well.

And it works really well with mild liners. just a great. Great paper and various like affordable. You can even get them on Amazon if you don’t wanna use jet pens.

[00:22:16] Susanne: And I just found, as I was looking for this spiral notebook, we have, it’s kind of a toy store. It’s a very much like a Japanese theme store, so very, like they have the pluses and the toys and all kinds of stuff, but they also have a stationary section. I know. And it’s like less than a mile from my house.

It’s so dangerous. Every time I drive by I’m like, Ooh, how could I go in there?

Okay. When you’re talking about horizontal planner, just for anybody who’s listening on the podcast, I’m sorry, vertical. So what? What does that look like? If you’re

[00:22:45] Sarah: Yeah, I prefer for my weekly layout. Now there’s, there’s. If you use an electronic calendar like Google Calendar and that is your source of truth for like what’s happening in your life, great. You might not need a vertical layout, but for me, I actually have my paper email source of truth. So I really like to be able to like see the week laid out so I can kind of see the spaces and I feel like vertical is the best for that.

Usually with some kind of hourly markings along the side, it’s almost like I can turn it into a paper, Google Calendar. Best, even if there’s extra space in addition to the hours where I can put some weekly things. So often if the, if the hours go all the way to midnight, I can repurpose those evening hours when I’d be asleep anyway and put like the kids’ activities, what we’re making for dinner.

I kind of put them in their own horizontal row. I’ve been planning with that kind of a weekly layout for a long time, and I don’t see that changing unless I ever move to more electronic, but I doubt it.

[00:23:40] Susanne: So do you

[00:23:41] Sarah: So yeah, I

like that.

[00:23:42] Susanne: do you have a Google calendar at all? Cuz that’s how my husband. And I like do dibs on time. Like if we want, if we wanna do a book club or a, he goes to one of his writer groups or whatever, like we gotta do dibs on the Google calendar to whoever gets that night. And so how do you

[00:23:57] Missy: Yeah, that’s how we do

family

share.

[00:23:59] Sarah: So my husband uses a Google Calendar sort of. I mean, I don’t know how much he actually references it, but he has it. And so if there’s an activity that I think he needs to know about in the evening, I do. Make an invite. I, I have it. And so I, and I’ll send him and then I’ll invite him. But, so I use Google Calendar and like generally, I don’t mess up the invites like I did today.

I’m like reasonably good at it, but my paper calendar is my source of truth. So how do you know about an event that goes through your Google Calendar? Well, you get emailed about it. And so in my mind, I’m not like saying yes to anything until I’ve looked at that email and I do clear my email out to inbox zero.

So I’m not gonna miss anything that I’m

getting

invited to. And write it into my paper calendar. It sounds laborious. It is fully not. I am a very efficient person.

[00:24:41] Susanne: I need to look at my inbox right now.

My,

[00:24:43] Missy: look. Don’t look.

[00:24:45] Susanne: let me see here.

[00:24:46] Missy: I am an inbox zero girl too. If there’s a red number, it makes my heart

[00:24:51] Susanne: I think mine’s around. Oh 10,697.

[00:24:57] Missy: Unread.

[00:24:58] Sarah: Well, you know what you’re allowed to do and you have that many is you’re allowed to just. Keep the first two pages and just archive everything else, and you’ll

be

[00:25:05] Susanne: my gosh. Because

[00:25:06] Missy: Yeah. My chest is a little tight right now, Susanne.

[00:25:09] Susanne: but I keep it as a diary. Like I, I was just writing a letter where I had to refer back to, whoa, oh, when did I start on the board of Carrying Hope? And so I just go search for carrying Hope and

I

[00:25:18] Sarah: can

also search for every single email. It just goes into archives.

It’s not

gone. I just

[00:25:23] Susanne: that’s Okay.

[00:25:24] Missy: Yeah. That’s what I do with them too.

[00:25:26] Susanne: Now I feel shame again.

No kidding.

[00:25:27] Missy: So have a, I have the dumbest question. I know there’s not supposed to be any dumb questions, but this is dumb, but I’m fixated on it, and maybe there’s somebody else out there who feels like I do. So I. When my calendars are on paper, the, the issue that I have run into is things change and you have to move things and things pop up, and then it gets messy and I can’t handle it when it’s messy.

So how do you handle that? What’s your strategy?

[00:25:53] Sarah: You’re gonna laugh. Okay. So when that happened to an extreme degree, like 2020, I was like, I’m getting a new planner. I cannot look at all these things crossed off. This is so depressing. Like everything is crossed off literally another week. Another fun thing crossed off like I couldn’t, I got a new, I got a brand new fresh planner and I do actually sometimes replace, I, I would say I switch planners every few months, so that helps a little bit.

That is my own personal twi. Quirk. I don’t necessarily recommend that, but the other thing I do is I’ll use a sticky note or I’ll just put a line through something. I’ll put a sticker on top and write the new thing. I’m not afraid to just put a X and put it like a triangle. That means like changed. So, oh, and you use frictions.

I don’t

[00:26:32] Missy: I have the

[00:26:33] Susanne: Real well I don’t love the writing

of, but I sure love the way you can erase them. I

[00:26:39] Sarah: For me, it’s not worth the trade off in writing, which is why. Again, pilot juice up, but I, I get the appeal. I do, and in fact, it might be nice to have those to use just for things that I’m not sure about. But my current practice is if something’s a little tentative, I do, I have tiny little cute sticky notes from jet pens, so I just write down the sticky note, put the sticky note in the planner.

They don’t fall out. And then if it doesn’t happen,

rip it off.

[00:27:00] Missy: gone.

What you said, that frees me more than anything that has ever freed me before, is that. You, this is like a life-changing moment I’m having here. you get a new planner, I get so hung up. So I’ve bought this planner. I’m gonna use it for the year. It’s gonna be my record of 2023, and then it doesn’t go well and it gets messy and I’m upset.

I’m gonna get a new planner, like

[00:27:22] Sarah: Planners. I mean, some of them are not cheap. Some of them, like a really luxe planner might be $60 or even like $80 for air condron. But there are also plenty of excellent planners to be had underneath the $20. Price point, which is like the price of lunch these days. I mean, not really, but almost. So if it’s something you look at every day and it’s bothering you, I say it’s worth, it’s worth moving on.

And I don’t change day legs, that would be a total pain. But, um, I’ve already changed what it’s, it’s, it’s wor we’re headed into May. I’m on my second planner. 2023. That’s okay. My second weekly planner.

[00:27:54] Susanne: yeah. I feel like I turned my planners into some type of archeology thing where I’ve, same thing where I wanted to look up in my email. I’ve, I have planners from. Decades ago where I still have them. Like do you throw ’em away? Do you just toss

[00:28:08] Sarah: I do, I keep a few. So I like to be able to say like, oh look, I have like my plan ever, like when have my first baby and I was tracking pumping, like I almost feel like one every five to 10 years is like the sweet spot. But I go through a lot of them and I am a thrower outer in general. So I just.

[00:28:26] Missy: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:27] Sarah: Recycle a lot of my planners, which I know it’s like sort of sac list, but it’s also freeing, right?

Because then it’s also like these are to be used and enjoyed while I have them. I’m not making a craft. Like

it’s, it’s okay if, if I had to cross everything off cuz either I can move on or I can just turn the page and I don’t need to keep it. And it’s, no, it’s not permanent,

it’s transient.

[00:28:48] Susanne: That’s true. Well, I’ve been enjoying customizing cuz I get the paper then that goes with my campus and then you can make whatever you want in Canva and then you just print ’em out and you just shove them in there. So I have fully customized, and I even have it built in with my little time tracker like, yes.

[00:29:05] Sarah: That’s awesome.

[00:29:06] Missy: That’s what I think I’m doing next.

[00:29:08] Sarah: Are you printing it onto like the quality paper, like koku paper? Like Oh, and it prints well on

[00:29:14] Susanne: Yeah, it prints really nicely.

[00:29:17] Sarah: I love that. I hadn’t heard of that.

[00:29:18] Susanne: oh yeah, I’ve got it all set up in the canvas so that, you know it’s offset on each side to accommodate the spiral. And Yes. And then if I don’t like the format, I just take those pages out and I, I start fresh.

[00:29:31] Missy: Make a new one.

[00:29:32] Susanne: Yes, I am. I’m, that’s why I love this thing.

It’s, it’s very accommodating to my whims and my failures.

[00:29:38] Sarah: I’m into that. You have to send me a picture of your, of your template.

[00:29:41] Susanne: I

[00:29:42] Missy: think if we can figure out how to share your template and if you’re willing to do that, we should put that like in show notes and in our group.

[00:29:48] Susanne: I would be happy to. And then you all have to go buy this really expensive B five sized spiral notebook to make it work.

[00:29:57] Missy: I think that’s what I’m buying next cuz my current planner’s not working for me.

[00:30:00] Susanne: It’s not. He had such high hopes.

[00:30:03] Missy: I, thought it was going to change my life, but turns out you can’t. Like I, I’m in charge of that, right? Like the planner can’t do that. Uh, but it’s too heavy is really the problem with it. It’s beautiful

[00:30:15] Sarah: What are you using? Which one is it?

[00:30:17] Missy: I don’t wanna say

it’s a Dutch, it’s a Dutch and Deckle, and it’s.

[00:30:21] Sarah: Oh, I haven’t heard of that.

[00:30:23] Missy: Beautiful. And you can kind of customize when you order it. And it’s the most lovely book. And it sits on my desk, on my blotter, on my desk. And it looks beautiful, but it weighs a lot. And so I don’t carry it around with me, and that’s the problem.

[00:30:36] Susanne: Hmm.

[00:30:37] Sarah: Form over function. It’s a

hard battle.

[00:30:39] Missy: Yep, So I’ve thought I might leave it on my desk and still use it to do some planning, but I need, I need the thing that I carry with me.

[00:30:46] Susanne: Huh. Okay.

[00:30:48] Missy: So think about that. If you order Dutch and Decel, you don’t have to order them by the year, which is what I did. You can order for a few months at a time or even less maybe, and then they don’t weigh a thousand pounds. So think about that.

[00:31:01] Susanne: Oh,

[00:31:01] Sarah: soon as we’re off, I’m Googling them. They sound fascinating.

[00:31:04] Susanne: the spiral

notebook. I

mean, yeah, I think that’s part of it is just because we are never sure exactly what we’re gonna want and I think every single planner we’ve ever bought, we have been a hundred percent sure was gonna like change her

life. But to Missy’s point, I think there’s a lot more things we need to work through

[00:31:23] Missy: An

[00:31:24] Susanne: in ourselves.

[00:31:25] Missy: clump of paper cannot change me.

[00:31:27] Sarah: I mean, a planner can be a tool when you feel like you’re starting fresh, it can give you a little bit of energy. It’s not gonna last for months and months on end, especially if it’s not a good fit or you’re trying to like make it work when it doesn’t really. and I know that’s why I sometimes like to switch.

I, somebody asked me like to design my dream planner and I had so much fun, like thinking about what I would include if I was like starting from scratch. And one thing that I thought would be cool would be like a little booklet for the daily part that you could like throw out each quintile, like start fresh,

[00:31:59] Missy: yes.

[00:32:00] Sarah: just build in that element so that you’re, you get to start something new every few months and kind of have that fresh, clean energy even if you’re not replacing the whole thing.

[00:32:08] Susanne: Yes,

[00:32:09] Missy: you can kind of do with yours, Susanne, you could kind of do that.

[00:32:11] Susanne: I know, and I have a million times, I have reformatted this like a bunch of different times and I, I really do think I’m getting there. I’m gonna patent it as soon as I get there. But then again, it is so individual and I do think it is, it’s just a process of learning. What works for you and maybe trying, you know what I have also found, get on one of those Buy nothing groups, the Facebook groups in your

neighborhood or whatever, because towards about March, there seems to be a lot of people who are deciding that theirs did not work for them.

Arrange like a neighborhood swap. Like, okay, everybody, one street to the left, let’s exchange planner. See if the next one works. but another thing, talk about really great habits and being organized. The fact that you are committed to a daily writing practice

like is just so epic to me. I think I’ve only met one other writer and we’ve been in the blogging community for. Going on a decade now, and I think everybody’s like, oh, if I get one once a month, mine’s probably once a year. I cannot even imagine. I can’t remember the last time I wrote something on my blog. So is that something that you consciously set out and like, this is a goal, I’m gonna do this every day, or is it something that just helps you shake the dust off?

Like what? What is that?

[00:33:23] Sarah: I mean, first I do miss days sometimes, so it’s not like I have like an unbroken. My blog has been around since 2004. Wouldn’t it be great if I had like an unbroken 20 year streak? I do. Not. A hundred percent. I do not. Um, but I love writing. I love writing a post. I. Process things. I think about things. I never, no, not never, now I’m gonna jinx myself, but I almost never sit down and I’m like, I don’t have anything to say.

I don’t plan any of my posts in advance. The only thing I can say I do is that I do always post my workouts lately on Sunday. Like my, what my runs were that week. And I tend to do something called five on a Friday. But then the contents of five and a Friday are like any five random things. So it’s not even like that’s anything.

And otherwise I just write whatever is in my head. And it’s very interesting, like every once in a while I’ll have. Some I’m like passionate impassion thing that just like comes out and I had no plan to do it and it took me 20 minutes and then I either get like a hundreds, well not a hundred, but like a whole bunch of supportive content comments or every back in the covid years I might write something and get a lot of people were in moods back then.

[00:34:23] Missy: People were in moods.

[00:34:25] Sarah: It’s funny cuz I’m, I’m like, but I just sat down and for 15 minutes to write this like I did, I wasn’t, you know, I’m not like

writing a journal article. I I’m thinking I’m processing exactly.

[00:34:34] Susanne: Oh my gosh.

[00:34:35] Sarah: and so it, and I just love doing it. Obviously I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love doing it. I don’t get much out of the blog.

Like, I mean, I have ads on my site, actually. I have more ads than I wanna have. All of a sudden they like doubled and I don’t understand what happened, but trying to figure it out. Um, but it’s not like the blog is like a lucrative venture. It’s just, I love doing it. I love the audience. I love the fact that some people have been reading my writing for like so many years.

I mean, that’s, Just cool and amazing, and I don’t know if I’ll ever stop writing like I might be writing when I’m 80

[00:35:08] Susanne: I’m so glad you do. And I, I do think actually we’re seeing a move back. Um, cuz Facebook took that away. Well, didn’t take it away. We gave it to Facebook and that Okay. The things that we used to write over here, these blog posts about, now we’re doing either longform, Facebook or sharing pictures there, whatever the case may be.

They’re monetizing that they’re taking our stuff and I just, part of me, if I ever have like a. Uninterrupted month. I just wanna go back through Facebook and like take every single post and like own it. Like take that back.

[00:35:39] Sarah: Yeah,

I get it. I quit. I. I. never felt like I was soul bearing on. I mean, I, I don’t know. I never used social media in that way. And even when I tried to, like, I’d make a page, I’d like never go to it. Like I, I’ve always liked going to my own thing. And I did quit Facebook in 2016. I quit Instagram in 2021. two of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

I’m never joining another social media. I mean, the closest thing I get to social media is Strava, which is like a running app and it almost feels too much like social media to me.

[00:36:08] Missy: Oh wow.

[00:36:09] Sarah: But I have mindset to like, I don’t follow that many people and I have mindset to private, so it’s not crazy.

[00:36:14] Missy: Do you have a thing that is like a guilty pleasure time suck? That I think for a lot of us is social media. Like, do you have a thing?

[00:36:23] Sarah: I have a thing that I don’t like that I do, which is if I get really stressed, I, I like just start checking stuff. Like I’ll just check email and I’ll check what’s up and I’ll check email again, and then I’ll check my text and then I’ll text somebody and then I’ll. Check my email like, so I feel like that’s the only thing left.

And every once in a while I go to Reddit, like I don’t really post ever, but I’ll like look at the threads and mostly the threads I look at are like stationary related and I don’t really find it to be terrible. But then, I don’t know, it sort of has some of the same compare. What I like better about Reddit is nobody’s trying to be a Reddit star.

So people are not like selling themselves in the way that. Everyone started to on Instagram, so I do like that it’s, it’s like more back in the heyday of like looking at a prodigy blend board or something like that. Okay. I just dated myself so bad. I was born in 1980. I, yeah, that was my first exposure to the internet in like the late eighties or early nineties or whatever.

But, um, I still don’t love when I do it, so I actually try really hard not to do it. I, I look at my, I keep my screen time widget, like on my front of my phone. I forget what blog I’d learned that from. Maybe Grateful k I forget. But I was like, great idea. And I try to keep it under like a hundred minutes a day, which sounds like a lot, but a lot of it’s just like, let’s check the weather, let’s.

pull up my text. Okay. I got a WhatsApp. Or like, I’m using Google Map. So it’s n it’s actually not a lot of like actual scrolling time or anything. Um, yeah, those are, that’s my, that’s really what’s left. Hopefully I can get rid of that.

[00:37:47] Susanne: Yeah. I mean it all is that little dopamine hit

of like, whoa, did something show up? Ooh, did something show up?

[00:37:53] Sarah: Yeah, that’s the checking. It’s such a slot machine. It’s like, Ooh, I got a happy, I’m in a bad mood. And three days ago I got a really cool email. So let’s see if one might magically pop up.

[00:38:03] Susanne: You know what I was thinking about that? I was thinking

about that so much yesterday that I actually had a dream that I won a slot machine and it was really exciting, but it all came out in nickels and it was like a thousand dollars.

[00:38:18] Missy: Okay. Matt

[00:38:19] Sarah: I wouldn’t turn down a thousand dollars in nickels.

[00:38:21] Susanne: It’s just a lot of

buckets.

[00:38:23] Sarah: nickels. Yeah,

[00:38:24] Missy: a lot of buckets. They can go to the bank just like anything else.

[00:38:27] Susanne: Oh my gosh. Oh, I could seriously talk to you for a week about all the things that would get my life organized, and I’m sure a lot of our listeners could do. And I love the fact of, you know, bringing humanity back to things. The fact you’re doing the blog posts, the fact that social media is not like your place where you’re connecting with people and.

Taking that to the extreme and doing your, uh, best laid plans academy where you actually get to see people in their actual faces in human contact. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:38:58] Sarah: Well, you say human context. So I have two things that I’m doing. So I’m doing best Way Plants Academy, which is I’m now like midway through my second round of it, and it’s basically a seven. I don’t wanna say lecture, but like seven meeting series where we go through all the different horizons of planning from annual to daily and then all the stuff in between.

And it’s kinda like classroom size and I teach it, but then people also ask questions. And then there’s a lot of like interactive time. Like I’ll say like, okay, in the next five minutes I want you to identify where all your inboxes are so that we can like then delve into it, like whatever. So I’m trying to take people from like, I’m not sure I like my system to, okay, I have a really good system that I’m confident in.

I know where my goals are. I. I feel like I’ve had a thoughtful structure to how I plan my time. So that’s my goal at the end of Bustley Plans Academy. I think I’m doing pretty well. It’s been really, really fun. It’s very interactive and people enjoy the accountability and like supportive atmosphere, so that’s been great.

I’ve done two rounds. I’m not sure running, I think I’m gonna open my third round up probably like. Quin four. So like back to school, kind of like that timeframe. Um, but I only opened those up like one at a time. And then I decided that with all this zooming that what was missing for my life was like live, like I wanted to meet people and see them and I was like, this is the worst business decision ever, but I’m gonna do a live retreat.

So, So I booked a hotel, and we’re doing it. And so there’s best laid plans. Live is in November in Fort Lauderdale. You can get information on my website if you want, and I’m gonna take people through like planning their next year. So it’s, um, two nights and like you’ll come and we’ll have like some fun sessions, like, we’ll, you know, the first night’s like a social kind of like happy hour type party.

And then during the day I’m gonna actually take you through it. They’re gonna be like, oh, special workbook. And you’re gonna get your own little notebook. And then we’ll talk about like your priorities for the next year. And I’ll just like, Help people will plan together. So I am so, so excited for that.

And, um, it’s, it’s not full, but it’s getting there. And, um, yeah, so if you’re interested, check it out. And I’m, it’s, it’s, it’s like a crazy idea. cuz I’m learning like it’s a lot riskier and harder to put something together in person than it is on Zoom. Zoom. There’s like all these structures and like apps almost.

But

when you’re doing something live, like. I don’t know. It’s harder, but I, I think it’s gonna be so fun and I hope

it goes well cause then I can do more.

[00:41:14] Susanne: I think it’s a wonderful idea. Yes.

[00:41:16] Missy: Yeah, I do too. And I hope, I hope everybody goes and signs up and maybe Susanne and I need to go sign

[00:41:22] Susanne: I know

[00:41:23] Sarah: Laura’s coming. Laura has registered as a participant

at

[00:41:27] Missy: awesome.

[00:41:28] Sarah: Lens Live and I’m like, that is very nice of you. She’s like, no, I actually wanna go. And

[00:41:31] Susanne: Yeah. Cuz she really needs to get her shit together.

[00:41:34] Sarah: I think she just wants to be away from her kids so she can plan in peace, and I’m providing the venue for that to happen,

[00:41:40] Susanne: That is amazing.

[00:41:42] Missy: I mean, that is a gift to yourself for sure, that you, and you’re going into that busy season of life already with some structure around what that first quintile is gonna look like for

[00:41:53] Sarah: Exactly. That’s why I did it in November and not in January. I could see the logic for doing it in January and honestly, our weather is better in January than it is in November. But, um, I thought, you know, people wanna plan before so you can hit the ground running in the new year. But we’ll see. Maybe in the future, depending on feedback, the the one for the year after might be, might be January.

We’ll see.

[00:42:14] Missy: Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, our time has gone well way too fast. But before we jump to our look, listen and learns, tell our listeners where they can find all of this information and find you, and we will put it in our show notes as well.

[00:42:26] Sarah: Yeah, the easiest place is just go to the shoebox.com, T H E S H U, which are my initials, B O x.com, and you’ll find links to the podcasts, or you can find best laid plans on any podcast platform or best of both worlds with Laura Vanderkam and me on any podcast platform as well.

[00:42:44] Missy: Awesome. Okay. We’ll put

[00:42:46] Sarah: for me on social media. I’m just kidding.

[00:42:48] Missy: and.

[00:42:49] Susanne: I know I followed you on Instagram. I was like, this is a, an old picture.

[00:42:54] Sarah: I have an Insta that still exists because I wanted to, if people were searching for me, I wanted them to be able to find my other stuff and I left my old stuff up, but I think I put like basically an away message. I’m like, I’m not here.

[00:43:03] Susanne: Yes.

[00:43:05] Missy: Yeah. You’re not gonna get new

[00:43:06] Susanne: it.

[00:43:07] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:43:08] Missy: All right, well, if anybody is new to the podcast today, we are so glad you’re here. And every week we do a look, listen, and learn segment. And it’s just a few minutes talking about things we might be reading, watching, discovering new products. Sometimes it’s silly, sometimes it’s serious, and we hate to put our guests in the hot seat.

So, Susanne, you’re going first this week. What are you? Look, listening, learning.

[00:43:30] Susanne: Let’s see. So I am looking at Barry, bill Hader. Have you, do you watch this show? Oh my gosh, he’s okay. So I fell in love with him as Stefan on SN L, and he is just amazing on anything on SN l, the fact that he has. The range to go from that to this killer for hire, just this sociopath murderer, is just crazy.

And then, oh

[00:44:01] Missy: He’s so good. You kind of forget He’s a murderer.

[00:44:03] Susanne: know and you really pull for him,

[00:44:05] Missy: Yeah.

[00:44:06] Susanne: but, and they also, I know your favorite, the Fons is on there. Of course, Henry Winkler is amazing. And then this, uh, oh, I don’t know the actor’s name who plays NoHo. Hank

my

favorite. Oh my gosh. They’re all just such talented actors. I think this is the, this is the final season, right?

Am I making that up? Final season. It’s so dark and it’s so like the last episode, I don’t think I exhaled. The whole episode

[00:44:32] Missy: I’m, I’m not caught up, so

[00:44:34] Susanne: Yeah, but it’s, but it’s back. It’s back. The season just started last week, a couple weeks ago. So, yeah, watching that, I am listening to, I’ve got two books and I, I’m gonna pull the KJ mantra and not like, speak too much of them, cuz I did not like them so much.

[00:44:52] Missy: Yep.

[00:44:53] Susanne: but Burnham Wood is a very interesting concept. but super wackadoo ending. but I can’t explain why it’s wackadoo or else I’m just gonna ruin everything. And then I also just, listened to a book called Bunny, which I do not. Even though eventually I had to start listening to it at like one and a half speed, cuz I’m like, I don’t think it’s going to get better. I think here’s the thing, it’s so like bizarre and conceptual that I, I was thinking like, oh this is a dumb book. How’s this lady so smart? And she like is a teacher, it’s somewhere fancy, but I think if I would’ve been listening to Fight Club, like Reading Fight Club or one of these movies or whatever, I think would just be really bizarre if you’re like, I don’t, I don’t get it.

It’s weird. And it’s kind of that it’s very dark, kind of mean girls.

What’s the one where all the girls were like, Heather’s?

[00:45:50] Missy: Oh yeah.

[00:45:51] Susanne: Kind of Heather’s a little witches of eastwick, but not the humor part. Um, it’s just, it’s about a bunch of, it’s like group of five women who are in an MFA writing program. At a school, which I’m guessing is meant to be brown, because that’s where the author did her mfa

and they keep on talking about New England, but it’s a group of four, these bunnies who are like the cool girls, and then the one who’s the outcast, and it just starts like, oh, this is interesting, these dynamics or whatever.

And then it just, it’s crazy off the rails. Nut nuts. Like I can’t even, again, I can’t even

[00:46:30] Missy: I’m curious, like I don’t wanna, I might go to the library and get that.

[00:46:34] Susanne: I don’t know. You can’t read at one and a half speed that way. I guess you

[00:46:40] Missy: It’s true. I can just,

[00:46:42] Susanne: But is the book is the book for my fancy book club? so I’m very curious to, I went and read on Amazon cuz it’s like, is it just me? Cuz this is like what the fourth book that I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t like this book.

And I’m thinking maybe I just have low. Class reading habits. I dunno.

[00:47:00] Missy: No, but you like what you like and you, you should not be required to like something just because everyone says it’s amazing and I. I occasionally will pick up something that’s won a big award and think, nope, because a lot of times those books are just on a different level and I’m not looking for that.

I’m looking for an escape that is simpler.

[00:47:20] Susanne: All the important people, quote unquote important people have said this, this genius in a work of art and fabulous. So I don’t think I’m gonna like tank her sales by saying that it was not my favorite read. So, so that’s it with the Bunnies and the Burnham Wood. And the other thing I’m finally listening i’s just Selena Gomez instead of Taylor Swift, because

[00:47:41] Missy: Oh, thanks

[00:47:42] Susanne: done with Tay around here besides me, so I’m mixing it up.

[00:47:46] Missy: Awesome.

[00:47:47] Susanne: friend, that’s, I, I just, if I can’t listen to Taylor, I’m gonna listen to her best

[00:47:52] Missy: That’s right. That’s why they was

[00:47:53] Susanne: Well, that’s

me.

[00:47:54] Missy: never finish. All right. That’s you.

[00:47:56] Susanne: What

about you,

Sarah?

[00:47:58] Sarah: Oh, I’m next. I thought maybe you were next. Okay. So, books, I am never like the first one to read something, but I love Curtis Sittenfeld and when I saw she had a new book coming out, she’s the one who wrote prep. She wrote Rodham. She, I’ve like every single. Old book she’s put out. I went on the library hold list and I was like, I’m gonna be first cuz I, I put it like before the book came out and it worked.

Like I got, I didn’t sit on any lists so I already read it. It was so good. I love, I love her work. And it’s about, um, basically a writer on like a fictional version of um, Saturday Night Live that’s called something else. But um, it also is a second book I have read in a row with the plot line of like normal looking woman, seduces very hot star, which is weird cause like, Two books in a, like in a row.

but it’s okay. This one was my favorite one and I thought it was just so well done and the characters were charming and I loved it. So that made, look, I guess, I can give you a TV show too. I’ve been loving bad sisters. I mean, that might not be news to people,

but that’s so

awesome. I’m not done, so like, I won’t spoil anything and you cannot spoil anything.

But

I was sick. I had strep, I caught strep from the kids, which I feel like sounds like a very child illness.

But,

[00:49:02] Susanne: watched it for Covid. It must be,

it

[00:49:04] Sarah: just lied down and like let, ugh. It was so soothing and like engaging. It was perfect. And then ugh, learn is a little tougher. I guess I’m learning a lot about running, even though I knew a lot about running.

I have a coach, which is like very indulgent cause I’m not like anywhere in a level that would need a coach. It’s

[00:49:24] Missy: No, everybody needs a coach. That’s our

[00:49:26] Sarah: is a coach and I’m in a running group with people who are like faster than me, so I’m always learning new tips and tricks from them. And it’s just fun to just like immerse in that world, just like I would immerse in the world of planners and pens and like, it’s just another thing to get mildly obsessed with, and I think it’s very fun.

[00:49:43] Susanne: Oh,

that’s such a great, I have a, I have a couple friends who they run kind of as a group with a coach, so, but they all do that. And I think, uh, my running’s not to that point, but maybe I could get to that point if I had a. Coach, tell me how to do it right. And maybe if I didn’t try to do 10 Ks after, not running for three months.

[00:50:01] Sarah: I don’t think many coaches would recommend that particulars

training strategy, but you made it

[00:50:05] Missy: No,

[00:50:06] Sarah: You made

[00:50:06] Susanne: I,

[00:50:07] Missy: you survived anyway.

[00:50:09] Susanne: we’ll put work in quotes.

[00:50:12] Missy: I think it’s so admirable that you’re in a group where everybody’s faster than you are, because a lot of people could join that and just be like, oh, I don’t fit

here,

[00:50:20] Sarah: Not everybody is actually, that’s why it’s not scary. Like there’s other people that are very similar. Um, but the, but like the person who started the group is so much faster than I will

[00:50:30] Missy: And it’s a

[00:50:31] Sarah: cool. I love it.

[00:50:32] Missy: Yeah. Such a great way to learn from somebody who’s doing things a little differently.

[00:50:36] Susanne: yes.

[00:50:37] Sarah: Or who has natural talent that I don’t possess?

[00:50:40] Missy: Yeah, some people just are born to run.

[00:50:42] Susanne: Yeah. So they’re born with it. It’s not Maybelline.

[00:50:45] Missy: Yeah,

[00:50:45] Susanne: What about you,

[00:50:46] Missy: yeah. Um, let’s see. I just watched the se um, second season of single Drunk Female, which the first season was a look, listen and learn sometime ago. Uh, I really, really love that show and, um, It got me to watch. I didn’t watch the whole thing, but I went and pulled up the Breakfast Club because Allie Sheie is the mom and single drunk female.

And then Molly Ringwald is a character in the second season. And so I was like, I just kind of wanna go watch the Breakfast Breakfast Club again. So I had one day that was all Addie, Allie Sheie, Molly Ringwald. It was really fun.

Um, and the Breakfast Club is so it’s, I hadn’t watched it in years. It’s so different than what I remembered of it.

Like, I recommend going to watch it again. I can’t decide if I think it holds up, but I think it does. It may be one of the John Hughes movies that holds up the best. Um, still a lot of stereotypes and stuff that we would not deal with today, but it’s still the co like what they’re talking about and what these kids are thinking about is that kind of stuff never ends, family relationships and school and life and that never changes.

[00:51:51] Susanne: Yeah, I’m still mad that they made over ally sheie, though

[00:51:55] Missy: oh, yeah.

so let’s see my learn, well, I have two learns actually. One is silly and one’s a little more serious, but I learned about the pink stuff, which Susanne and I have a group of friends and our friend Leanne brought up that she was cleaning her Dutch oven with it, and I didn’t know you could use it on pots, so I had the pink stuff, had never used

it,

[00:52:16] Susanne: Can you explain what the pink stuff is for people that are not on our text thread?

[00:52:19] Missy: Yeah.

Yeah. So it’s a cleaner and, um, it, it comes in a little tub, a pink tub, and it’s called the pink stuff. And it’s supposed to be so versatile and clean, all these things. So I bought it a, I don’t know, probably three to six months ago. I can’t remember when I bought it. And I thought, well, I’m just gonna clean all these things.

And I had never opened the little tub of cleaner. But then Susanne, I mean, then Leanne mentioned that she used it to clean a pot, and I’m like, I didn’t even know it did that. Which if you read on the side, that’s one of the things it says it’s best for is cleaning pots and pans. So we have our lodge like enamel.

Dutch oven was a little sad looking, so I went after it the other night and it felt so good. So go buy the pink stuff, you can get it on Amazon. and I’m sure many other places too. but it’s great. And it doesn’t smell bad. And it doesn’t feel toxic and it’s just, I don’t know what it is. I have no idea what it is, but it was great.

and then my other learn is I am trying to learn how to make, do a good pitch. For book, I want to enter a contest that’s coming up soon and I have to get my pitch down to 250 words. And, um, yeah,

[00:53:28] Susanne: Are you doing Pitch wars? Is that what it’s called?

[00:53:30] Missy: It’s not pitch wars, it’s with tall poppy writers, but they’re doing a pitch contest that’s open until May 9th.

Well, I’ll post the link to it. Um, and 250 words seems like plenty, and yet it is not enough. Like learning to boil everything down has been hard.

[00:53:48] Susanne: It’ll be so

[00:53:48] Missy: Yeah. Oh gosh. I dunno. Hold me, hold me while I do this.

[00:53:53] Susanne: You can do it. Hey, if I can finish a book proposal in five years, you can do this.

[00:53:59] Missy: Yeah, yeah. Doing it May 9th. No, in five years. May 9th. That’s what I’ve

[00:54:05] Susanne: Oh my goodness.

[00:54:06] Missy: There you go.

[00:54:07] Susanne: my goodness. It’s so much fun. Oh my gosh. I need to listen to this episode like five more times and, and take all the notes. Well, we’ll have all the notes in the show notes for anybody who missed anything as far

as the different planners and papers and pens and all the things.

cuz yeah, you’ve tried ’em all.

[00:54:23] Sarah: I have, well, I don’t, I haven’t tried them all. There are so many. There’s

like

infinity planners out there. I mean, you would been named one, I didn’t know. Like people. People, you must know them all. Like no, there’s like hundreds literally

of planner brands, but I know a lot of them and I, it’s so fun. So thank you so much for having me.

This was great.

[00:54:39] Susanne: Oh, well

[00:54:40] Missy: It was so

fun

[00:54:41] Susanne: us. Yes, I’m so excited and I will share, I’ll share my one that I designed and then Missy, even though it didn’t work for you. Yeah, let’s definitely share yours so people, cuz who knows it might be the one that fits someone else’s needs

[00:54:53] Missy: Right. And if you have, like, if you don’t have to carry your stuff around with you, it’s perfect.

So some people

[00:54:59] Susanne: you, If you, would just remain stationary at your desk 24 hours a day,

[00:55:04] Missy: or if you’re a lot stronger than I am, maybe I’m just a weenie.

[00:55:08] Susanne: Oh, well thank you again. Really appreciate it and so glad to finally meet you.

[00:55:14] Missy: Have a great afternoon.

[00:55:15] Susanne: Okay, bye-bye.

[00:55:17] Missy: Bye.

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